STATE FAULTS CL&P IN 3 CHESHIRE HOUSE FIRES

MARISA OSORIO COLON; Courant Staff WriterTHE HARTFORD COURANT

Connecticut Light & Power Co.'s inadequate grounding of power lines was the underlying cause of fires that destroyed three houses during a heavy snowstorm in April, a state investigation has concluded.

Electricity surged into the homes on April 10 after a tree fell on power lines weighed down by heavy, wet snow.

Last week, the state Department of Public Utility Control released the results of its investigation, which also concluded CL&P; took too long to shut down power to the homes after the fires sparked. Firefighters inside were receiving shocks from the floor as they battled the blazes.

Fire officials said it took nearly two hours to shut off the electricity, a step that ordinarily takes only minutes.

"We don't get very many like this. The case is unusual," DPUC spokeswoman Beryl Lyons said Thursday. "I think that the outcome will be better protection for everyone."

DPUC has ordered the company to make several changes in procedures to prevent a similar problem.

"The department believes that an underlying cause of the Cheshire house fires was related to inadequate grounding on both the company's and customers' systems," the decision says.

David Forrest, CL&P;'s director of distribution, engineering and operations, said Thursday he did not agree that the company grounds caused the fires.

"Basically what the commission was saying was that maybe if the company had lower resistance grounds, the current would have flowed through the company's grounds and less through the houses, and that would have delayed the fire starting," he said. "It's impossible to know."

CL&P; has been ordered to conduct an immediate survey of a representative sample of large and medium-sized electric utilities to obtain information about how they assure their driven grounds work. A driven ground involves a wire running down a power pole that diverts overflows of electricity to a copper rod driven into the ground outside a home.

The company also will have to inspect and test a sample of its driven grounds and remove any trees, limbs or branches that are likely to touch power lines before the next scheduled trimming.

CL&P; officials said Thursday that power to the Cheshire homes was not quickly shutdown on April 10 because the surprise snowstorm had left thousands without power throughout the state and the company's dispatching center was flooded with reports of problems. At the time, the center had no way of highlighting the calls that put the public at risk.

Since that time, Lyons said, the company has made changes. A dispatcher now has the ability to highlight a particular address if there is an incident in which public safety is a concern and move response to that incident up in priority.

"They had no real way to do this before, so this brought it to light," Lyons said.

No one was injured in the Cheshire fires, however, DPUC, in its decision, said two factors were "extremely troubling."

One regarded the secondary overhead power line. The primary overhead cable shorted to that line after the tree fell, sending high voltage into homes, according to DPUC.

"First, CL&P; was unable to determine how the secondary was grounded," the decision says. "If it cannot be determined how the secondary was grounded, it is highly probable it was not grounded in the first place, which would readily explain why fault current headed toward the homes damaged -- via the secondary."

The other factor, the commission said, was that CL&P; didn't appear concerned over the adequacy of its grounds in the Cheshire neighborhood, since it saw no need to check them after the extensive damage.

Daniel Venora, senior counsel at CL&P;, said the orders from DPUC are reasonable. "We thought this was an isolated event," he said. "We don't think it was indicative of any widespread problem on our system. We think our current standards are adequate."

Christine Kasinskas, who lived in one of the homes that burst into flames, filed the original complaint with the department. Her house at 1070 Prospect Road has since been rebuilt, and she lives there with her husband, John, and her 8-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn.

"If I had never filed the complaint, Northeast Utilities [CL&P;'s parent company] would have never reported it to DPUC," Kasinskas said Thursday.